Please Hire Me To Write Your Sequel

Whaddya mean “There was a 21 Jump Street movie?” Chyeah, there was! And it just barely made enough money to – according to actuarial tables – suggest that a sequel would be economically viable! It’s how creative ideas are BORN!

Well, summer is shifting to its latter half now, with the coming of August. And with it, the realization that there just isn’t enough time for all those lazy days, those projects, and those trips as you always think there will be. Also, it’s time for Hollywood to begin the slimy, crass calculations to determine which films squeezed out enough money to justify the forcible assembly of a sequel. To date? Sequels for this summer’s films being explored include (deep breath) Magic Mike; Men in Black; Snow White & The Huntsman; 21 Jump Street; Spider-Man; every single thing remotely connected to The Avengers including, perhaps, a shawarma franchise; Ted; Prometheus; American Reunion; a new Batman franchise; and The Hangover Part II (despite being one of the laziest sequels ever made – which I’ll explore more in my upcoming triptych “The Good, The Bad & The Contentious – the best, worst, and most debated sequels of all time.” Get excited!).

That’s a lot of sequels. Hollywood, you may have gotten in over your head, but I want to tell you, I’m here to help. I can make these sequel scripts happen for you.

I will not rock the boat. Sometimes you hire someone to write a sequel and they come back with further exploration of the characters, and new developments, and entirely new plots, and you’re like “What the hell??” I will not deviate in tone, pace, characterization or progress from the original. Ever.

It’s been 20+ years since John McClane’s had a context or provocation for saying “Yippee Kay-yay, mother f***er,” but has he let that stop him? No. No, he has not.

Hey, you know that funny line in the original that was a little catchphrase for a while? Don’t worry – I will cram that thing inelegantly into the sequel. I don’t care if the line is so time & place specific it hurts – maybe it’s “The American revolution is over? But I just got all these feathers in my cap!” Doesn’t matter. I will find a way for the character to say it.

Your movie was the kind of incredible series of events and transformative experiences that could only happen once in a lifetime? Don’t worry. We’ll handle any problems people have with plausibility by having someone say something like, “I can’t believe the same thing is happening twice!”

Bigger, bigger, bigger! Maybe the villain blew up a house in the original. Well, then in the sequel he’ll blow up an apartment building. Character gets drunk and sleeps with a prostitute? Now he’ll sleep with a bear. Villain was a psychotic serial killer? In the sequel he’ll be a serial genocider.

“No time for love, Dr. Jones” indeed! Ha ha ha! Oh, can you even imagine how bad Temple of Doom would have been without Short Round? Well, it was terrible anyways, but that would have left Kate Capshaw to do all the migraine-inducing shrieking on her own!

Did someone say “wacky third wheel”? What Short Round did for Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom? What Joe Pesci did for Lethal Weapon 2? That’s what I can do for your movie.

I’m thinking, for the sequel that this time – stay with me here – it’s personal. Eh? Eh? That’s called “creativity” my friend.

Oh, right, like people want to see the relationship from the first film “develop.” *snort* Right. Besides, we’re going to want someone much younger. Wasn’t Kiera Knightley in your first film? And she’s got to be at least *shudder* 30 at this point. Yecch.

You know the beautiful woman in the first film? The one who gave the protagonist someone to save/fall in love with/learn to embrace life from? Don’t worry, we’ll ditch her so the protagonist can do the same thing again with a new, hot woman in the sequel. We’ll figure something out. “Oh, she moved. She lives on an island, now.”

Assuming the sequel does even remotely well, I’m primed and ready to triumphantly announce that this was intended as a trilogy all along. We’ll figure out what happens in the third film later. Cross that gold-plated bridge when we come to it.

The “shawarma” gag in Avengers really was pretty great.

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About The Byronic Man

Recently voted "The Best Humor Blog in America That I, Personally, Write," The Byronic Man is sometimes fiction, sometimes autobiography. And sometimes cultural criticism. Oh, and occasionally reviews. Okay, it's all those different things, but always humorous. Except on the occasions that it's not. Ah, geez. Look, it's a lot of things, okay? You might like it, is the point.

Well, you’re going to want at least one gigantic monologue in which someone explains that this threat is waaaay bigger than what they faced before. That it was nothing compared to this. That way the audience understands that the threat is way bigger than what they faced before, and thus not just a rehash, and therefore, worth sitting through a sequel.

That would be a logical conclusion given my typical tastes (totally saw it), but in this instance I maaaay have been poking fun at B-Man’s photo cropping for the Titanic/dragon winning post from his Question of the Week series.

Oh-ho, I see what you’re up to – trying to my and Angie Z’s, and who knows whose else, head’s to explode, or at least get an eyeball to fill up with blood.

Well, it won’t work. I’m totally serene and at peace with your assertion that Kate Capshaw WAS SO AWFUL IN THAT MOVIE. ARE YOU– HOW CAN YOU– I mean, it’s a bad movie no matter what!! But dumping Karen “Until I get my money back, I’m your God damn partner” Allen who was sexy and tough and smart and cool for Kate “I sleep in my jewels and nothing else” Capshaw with her shrieking and whining and “eeewwwwww”??!! AAAAUUGGHH!!!

The “Meet the Fockers” franchise has already gone through a fair amount of life events, including engagement, marriage and kiddies. Using super-sped up Hollywood chronology, it’s now time for Ben Stiller’s character to send his kids off to college, in the hilarious new “Focker U!”

There’s room for lots of hilarity as Ben finds out that college costs too much and he has to take a second job to help with costs. Of course he’ll be too proud to let Robert Deniro’s character find out and keeping that second job a secret can sure cause some zany confusion!!

At some point, Ben will accidently hit Bobby D in the private parts, and Bobby will make a really funny face!

I was actually referring to “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” which was vastly different to any of the Fockers movies. It was my attempt at sounding high-brow and sophisticated after posting a blog today which was largely about dog crap.

Sorry, there are just too many references that don’t work on me – references to old Hollywood movies, almost all kinds of TV shows, sports – pretty much anything that’s on TV, since I’ve only actively watched TV for a couple of years. Now dog poop references… these I get, so I’ll be heading over to your blog now.

Enjoy! (Which a wierd thing to say as you send someone off to read about dog dootie). As far as the film references go, i’m no good either. Very little in the way of popular movies, and unfortunately too much bad tv…my apologies if you felt left out, you aint missing nuthin

You should be working in Hollywood, my friend. Where all that is holy is wooden. Like the dialogue from most movies these days. I’ve heard your stand-up routine. Those mogul types need to sign you up before you become the jingle man for Maytag.

You know, the line I originally wrote was “Now he’ll sleep with a prostitute who turns out to be a man!” and then remembered that that’s exactly what Hangover 2 did. God, what a pathetically lazy sequel.

I just read this morning that Prometheus is going ahead with a sequel. They could really use you on that. Such a mess! It would take a mind like yours to make sense- or make fun- of it. I mean that as a compliment.

I KNOW that you could rock the sequel. And I stand ready to write the…PREquel, Hollywood. Let’s explore the rotten home life/abduction by aliens/having pig blood dumped on her at prom that prompted our hero/villain to become what he/she was in the blockbuster/barely-above-water movie we saw this year.

I have a sequel suggestion for a film that really doesn’t need a sequel; ‘Not Being There’ as a sequel to ‘Being There’ and like the final Peter Sellers Pink Panther movie it could be cut with bits of the old films of Sellers. In fact why use actors at all in sequels, why not just make a movie from bits of old movies; yeah that’s a great idea, in fact why not just mix up two or three bits of classic movies and create a new one; take the best bits of say three great films and create a master mix sequel. Like ‘There’s Something Encountering My Cuckoo Nest’ – in which members of a lunatic asylum are convinced by one guy to go on a hunt for his lost high school girlfriend and find aliens instead. (They’ll probably do this one day and loads of people will think it’s great – creating a monster… )

Somehow the “my friend” tacked on to the end doesn’t sound like something that character would say. But if Bruce Willis could say the Hippie Cahier part, and then explain how it’s spelled and about the French, and you’re not REALLY a hippie or a hipster, nor do you have abnormally large hips and all, that would be really cool dialogue!

I think they always film that scene on the last day of filming the first movie, anyway. That way if the ingenue gets tough on her salary for the 2nd film they can negotiate hard – “look, we already got your death in the can, here!”